When I posed my fat arse on the wobbly seat
the miasma of anxiety started creeping in;
I confided with my cringed self: "Am I dead meat?"
but then I stopped my thoughts, for they cried 'begin'.
Soon, the queer yet maddening trepidation
--luring my psyche with its honey-branded finger--
squeezed out my skin's salts into vile accretion
and fed the dreaded worries scheming to linger...
Hitting my head, I calibrated my pair
and refocused on questions pressed on paper.
As I did, words articulated on air
and before long, all numbers danced and capered
around and around; the black mass whizzed with glee
shoving into my sweet tooth various queries
on parabolic graphs, gross stoichiometry,
murderous narratives and strange theories.
Wallowed winds sprang from my left, striking my plight
and, like a banshee, screamed to my ruddy, pinched ear:
"Fifteen grains of sand left, fifteen grains to write"
and thus I penned without notice thoughts unclear.
In due time, the reaper harvested his tripos
and with a deathly scowl announced to my face
"Sit and wait in agony for your status."
so, half-eaten by terror, I fled in haste.
I counted the days I suffered,restless in pace,
hearing the unkind words father might resign
if ever I fail to achieve magnum grace.
Hence, with terrible drear, I prayed to the Divine.
Knowing not the tenure conditions of God,
I faced what old time have reserved for so long
I clicked links, opened pages and gave a nod:
my fear of failure have always been so wrong.
Background: It's for a contest, see, for writing a piece about passing the UPCAT. The UPCAT is the most difficult university admission examination in the Philippines. Adding up to that, examinees are required to wait half a year in fear and anxiety to see the results in the internet. No grades will be shown, only the names of the passers, which is only 15% out of the 70,000's who took the exam
Okay, so, Black here for requested Review Day Review!
Sorry. A ballad is really a piece of music. Your ballad's amazingly complex rhyming is negated by your terribly complex wording, thus making the piece sound something more like a piece of narrative poetry. Let me show you what I mean:
First off: Interesting piece. You showed your whole point, threading your way through the process neatly, using good (If a bit complex) wording, nice rhyming, and a neat sense of pacing. Seeing as you warned me that you'd written this pretty quickly I'll give you some slack on your problems but here they are.
Ahem! Sadly, this isn't what I'd exactly call a ballad.
Look at that rhyming! It's really nice! Supremely well done! However, if you look a little bit closer your eyes will catch terribly complex sentence structure. Read this out loud, striving with all thyne might to rhyme the stanza! . . . Did it work? If it did then you have a singing talent my friend, because I, strive though I might, couldn't get this to rhyme. No twist or turn seemed to want to work!
No, but seriously. Miasma . . . I don't even know what that means. Confided . . . cringed . . . . wobbly . . . creeping. Your punctuation is superb as well, but it takes a master reader to be able to pull it all together and read it properly. . . . Sorry if that was a bit harsh, but I had to get my point across.
See ye what I mean? Good pacing, good flow, superb grammar, nice rhyming pairs, but over-complex wording.
I must advise you, as a reviewer, to A: Turn this into some narrative poetry (It would work well that way, though it wouldn't be quite to my taste) or B: Make your rhyming work!
Now I'm going to move on to a bit gentler topic: Nit-picking.
Okay, kinda as just a general thing I've noticed a lot in other people's poetry is that when you start a new stanza you start it as a new paragraph. I could be wrong, or they could, and you're actually doing it right, but you might want to look into it.
Double hyphen is unnecessary. Just use one.
First off: this was a nice stanza. That 'Magnum Grace' really was mioh! However you need a space after your comma after 'suffered', and I'm pretty sure that you're misusing drear. Drear somehow is associated with dreary, which means . . . dreary (Who doesn't know what it means!). I can't see why you'd use it here. Maybe fear . . . or something like that . . . Anyway! Do what works for you!
Doth myne eyes deceive me or is there a period before that 'so'. CAPITALIZE!
It turns out that it's getting really late over on this side of the world and I must now be heading for myne bed. Or floor in this case.
Great work! Remember though - If you want to improve in your writing you have to do it. Practice makes perfect - that applies to writing in every way!
~Black~
Thanks a lot Nether! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
About the ballad thing, well, I did that on purpose! I just put it there to make the title fancier (because they told me they won't grade the title). Hehehehe
Ok tis was a weird (in a good way) poem. Punctuation was off in most of the lines...
If you really just watch the punctuation and length of the lines It would be really great. The vocabulary in this was fantastic! You are like AMAZInG with vocabulary!!!!
~MindBlown
Hi Alfred! Overall I thought this was a good read with just the right amount of melodrama. That sounds like a heck of a test and I hope you passed. That said, I'm about to extreme nitpick since this is a contest entry.
Nothing wrong with this line, but I don't know how uppity your judges would be. "Ass/arse" is pretty mild as far as curse words go, but I don't know.
I'd changed "with" to "to".
I have no idea what "my pair" is referring to. Your eyes?
Never seen "tripos" before. Googled it and it apparently refers to honors exams at Cambridge. It seems to fit, but it's kind of weird. Might throw your judges off as well.
Did you mean fearing? And I've never heard resign used in this way, so I don't know if it's right. Might there be a better word to use?
Should be fears.
Overall, the rhyming was good and it flowed well. The images were funny--I especially liked the roundabout way you described sweating! My comments are nitpicky but I hope they helped. Good luck with the contest!
Thanks a lot for the review niteowl! I'd really consider the things you said! I'm really having a problem with the tripos, I know
Hey there, Speakerskat here to review for you and the Tisunami Tyrants!
VOCABULARY ! YOU are my vocabulary hero! Trepidation, psyche, and stoichiometry (I don't know what the last word means so it must be a big word). WOW . Very few poets have such a fine comand of the english language at your age. Bravo! However, big words spice up a poem , true. But to manny in to few of a space can kill it and make it boring and hard to read so be careful because some of your stanzas came close to that . Your punctuation faltered a biy here and there as I believe you are supposed to capitalize the first letter of the first word in each line within each satnza. I love the overall poem and, like I said vocabulary usage, awesome.
Keep it up!
~Speakerskat
Because I can't really understand som of the words in here, I'm jus gonna leave it at GREAT JOOOB! no, I really liked this. I really can't find fault with this, so I'm not even going to try to. But since we need review points, I'm going to keep writing.
my fave line was: "but then I stopped my thoughts, for they cried 'begin'.
preeetty <3
And thank you so much for the review on mine! I'lll try to find something of yours I can review :3
Thanks for reading until here <3
~Belle
I admire the concept
it took a creative cranium to write the reality faced by every Examinee in terror...
Nice Job bro--- I took the same exam last year... I passed but I've wasted the opportunity cause i wrote the far fetched course of my interest. Keep writing.